Libyans are just as hungry as Tunisians

[Joanne98]

We Arabs have been trapped between dictators and their friends in the west, but Tunisians have shown us a way out

In the 1970s, the young Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was the most impatient exponent of Arab unity. In 1973, he flew to Tunisia in order to convince his next-door neighbour to form a union with Libya. What happened during that summit says a lot about why Tunisia is the first Arab nation to overthrow a dictator through peaceful mass protest.

The first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, 70 years old by then, sat at a simple table with a microphone in front of him and a small glass of water to one side. He wore a French suit, his grey hair was slicked back, and he had on a pair of square dark glasses. He looked like Jorge Luis Borges. But, unlike the Argentinian author, Bourguiba wasn't a gifted orator. As a public speaker, the Sorbonne graduate lacked tact and was given to excitement. "What is the point of uniting 1.5 million Libyans with 5 million Tunisians?" he asked, mockingly.

It became clear, as Bourguiba went on, that he had two objectives in mind: to deflate and mildly humiliate the young Nasserist Libyan, and to outline his vision of the Arab world. Bourguiba's thesis was as simple as it was poignant: for the Arab people to build secure states and societies, they ought to concern themselves not with Arab unity, but with education and development.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/21/libyans-are-as-hungry-as-tunisians